The core of the 1850, 1860 and 1870 datasets was collected by Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss from the surviving manuscripts of the federal censuses of manufacturing. James Foust was involved in the early stages of this data collection. Fred Bateman and Jeremy Atack collected the 1880 data from the manuscripts of the census of manufacturing for that year. Bateman and I subsequently extended and recast the 1850-1870 data to yield nationally representative samples (self-weighting) as well as representative state samples. Funding (through several different grants) was provided by the National Science Foundation.

Data Format:

dBase IV files (can be imported into Excel, etc.)

Subject:

R (Industry: Manufacturing and Construction)

Geographic Area:

7 (North America: United States)

Time Period:

7 (19th Century)

Publications:

Data described in Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, “19th Century U.S. Industrial Development Through the Eyes of the Census of Manufactures,” Historical Methods, 32(4) Fall 1999, 177-188 and Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, DEPLORABLE SCARCITY (University of North Carolina Press, 1981), Appendix A, pp. 165-80. The data are fundamental to most of the work by Atack, Bateman, Margo, and Weiss dealing with manufacturing.